


Sunrise

by atheling



Series: Lancelot and Gawain's Excellent Adventures [4]
Category: Arthurian Mythology
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-24
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-03-15 23:34:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28946736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atheling/pseuds/atheling
Summary: Gawain has a nightmare. Lancelot tries to comfort him.
Relationships: Gawain/Lancelot du Lac (Arthurian)
Series: Lancelot and Gawain's Excellent Adventures [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2105058
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	Sunrise

They retreated from the tavern in tipsy and humiliated defeat following their puzzling and revealing encounter with the trio of ladies. It was a cold night and despite a mockery of a curtain hanging across the window of their shared room, a bitter wind began to whistle in as soon as the sun set. Prosaically, Lancelot elected to sleep on the floor. 

“You really don’t mind?”

“No, no, I love-- cold.” This was so blatantly untrue he rushed to correct. “I mean, I love the floor. This is a really good-- is this oak? Love it.”

Gawain blinked at him. “Uh huh?” 

“Uh huh!” repeated Lancelot. Any other night he would have been tempted to ask to share the bed, but in the wake of being mistaken for a couple it seemed too mortifying an endeavour. He wouldn’t want to imply anything. Not when there was so much to imply. “Uh-- I’ve got this nice burlap sack for warmth. It was in the corner.”

Gawain peered down from where he sat on the bed and studied it. “It only smells a little bit like horse! A win.”

“No thorns or knives in it or anything,” Lancelot agreed, hoping Gawain would enjoy this fun joke long enough to forget to convince him to not sleep on the floor.

“Luxury,” Gawain smiled, but for a moment it tugged down into a frown before correcting. “You must have truly found her misconception offensive. I will admit I did not think you were someone who would be so offended by such an idea.” 

The blush that rushed to Lancelot’s face prickled at his skin. He could feel Gawain staring at him. There was nothing he could say without opening himself up to more suspicion than he was comfortable with. On the other hand… if he  _ didn’t  _ clear up the misconception, Gawain might judge him for being close-minded. Lancelot had seen firsthand the scorn with which Gawain treated men who thought women were lesser-- it was quite probable he would defend other people from contempt as well. “Uhm,” he tried, and then floundered for a second before an out occurred to him. “Ah, I was just worried  _ you  _ were offended. And, uh, I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable?”

“Oh,” said Gawain, politely pretending to be convinced. “Well I can clear it up. I’m neither offended nor uncomfortable, at least not nearly as uncomfortable as you would be if you slept on the floor. It’s supposed to snow.” 

_ Fuck _ , thought Lancelot succinctly. Out loud he said: “Oh, that’s-- that’s nice of you. Sure. You’re sure you don’t mind?”

“Quite sure,” he insisted. “Really, I won’t even notice. It’s a large bed and I’m not-- that is,” he stopped before he could dare admit to the truth of being short, and settled for vague gesture. “At any rate, get in.” 

Lancelot acquiesced, trying to ignore the unkillable little thought that being directed to get in Gawain’s bed was not an unpleasant concept. He barely had the wherewithal to blow out the candle on the bedside table before arranging himself as formally as possible on a tiny corner of the pillow.

He attempted to imitate the repose of a corpse in its coffin, lying straight as a tree trunk with his arms crossed, as if to clearly indicate the neutral position of his hands, and stared with intense focus at the ceiling. Abnormal amounts of time spent sleeping in odd and uncomfortable places came in handy here, and he somehow managed to fall asleep.

He must have at some point at any rate, for he found himself waking up. He was a light sleeper, and particularly attuned to strange noises and sensations. That was why he could tell that, every so faintly, the bed was shaking. 

For a second he lay in the dark, trying to work out whether Gawain was having a particularly active dream or whether he was crying. A small sob, quickly stifled, convinced him of the latter. Lancelot’s heart sped up. What should he do? If Gawain was awake, he might be embarrassed were Lancelot to acknowledge his weakness. If he was asleep, then it would be best to wake him from whatever nightmare he was trapped in. 

Then a pained whimper made up his mind. Cautiously, trying very hard to grab Gawain’s shoulder instead of any parts of his chest, Lancelot gave him a shake.

Immediately, he stilled into frozen silence, shaking breaths turning to held ones. “Shit. Shit. I’m sorry I-- woke you. Please go back to sleep,” he said after a moment, the words like spitting up thorns. 

“No?” said Lancelot, before realising it sounded rude. Still. Something was clearly wrong. “I mean, ahhh… you don’t seem okay.”

“I’m fine,” he tried, in a somewhat pathetic tone which acknowledged the unlikelihood of this statement and some prideful obligation to make it anyway. “Just-- dreaming.” 

“Oh.” Lancelot frowned in the dark. “It didn’t seem like a good dream.”

“They never are.”

_ That  _ was relatable. Lancelot wondered briefly if he should let the matter drop for the sake of respectability and decided it would be a decisive fence delineating places their friendship was not to go; the last thing he wanted to do was make Gawain feel as though they were not good enough friends to talk to each other. “I-- I don’t want to pry, but-- you sound like you’re crying. Do you want-- a hug?”

Almost before he had finished asking, there was a surrendering shift in the bed, and Gawain had turned to press against him, face buried in his chest. Lancelot was so surprised that he squeezed his arms on instinct. For a second Gawain stilled. Then, in a very quiet voice, he said, “You know, I can’t remember the last time someone held me.”

“Oh,” Lancelot said, and held him more tightly, and sort of felt like crying too, except that one of them should have it together probably. “Not when--?” he trailed off awkwardly. 

Gawain squirmed against his chest and made a quizzical noise. “When what?”

He was aware this was a somewhat uncomfortable topic to bring up given the current situation, but he’d already begun and it was too late for anything but complete honesty. “When you’re-- ah, with someone. Do you not-- do you just leave?” 

For a long moment Gawain was silent and absolutely still, and Lancelot wondered if he’d crossed a line. This wasn’t the sort of thing they talked about. But then Gawain made a motion that was probably an aborted shrug and said, “Do I strike you as the sort of person to stick around?”

Which was sort of rudely petulant, but when someone was rude with an almost breaking voice, shaking in your arms, and he was your best friend, you let it go. But Lancelot didn’t know what one said in such a situation, so he ran a gentle hand through Gawain’s even more wild than normal brown curls and hoped it would be soothing. 

“Oh,” said Gawain after a moment, sounding as though he were on the verge of crying again, “that’s-- I don’t-- what?”

Lancelot stopped immediately, his hand frozen halfway through the motion of combing through Gawain’s hair. He had barely noticed what he was doing. Would Gawain think it was patronizing? Worse, would he think it was an overture to something else? “I-- I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“It was nice. I think,” he said, as if this were a very difficult thing to admit. “I should thank-- I’ll thank you. When I’m coherent, or we’ll pretend this didn’t-- that would be best. But thank you.” 

So, hesitantly, Lancelot resumed the motion, pulling Gawain closer with his other arm. How long they lay like that he couldn’t say, but eventually Gawain’s panicked breathing slowed. Occasionally Lancelot could feel Gawain’s eyes blinking against his chest, so he knew he wasn’t asleep. Eventually, he said, “Do you want to talk about it?”

“I do like talking,” Gawain said, and Lancelot rewarded this attempt at a joke with a quiet laugh, more to encourage him than express a great deal of amusement. “You know-- death. Dying. The usual-- everything.” 

“You-- had a dream about dying?” said Lancelot, surprised despite himself. He had never thought of Gawain as someone to whom death held any sway at all-- he waltzed through life like everything was expected and nothing could touch him. It was odd to think of him as ever being afraid.

“And killing,” he said. “I’m really-- I really am a coward. Don’t go telling everyone.” 

And it sounded as if he were crying again, or close to it, and Lancelot felt very unhelpful. Once again he was confused.  _ Coward  _ was not a word he would ever pick to describe Gawain. “Uh-- I mean, dreams do weird things?”

“I think-- they punish me for trying to forget things when the sun is up.” Then he tried to laugh, almost self effacingly. “Weird.” 

“I understand fear of dying,” Lancelot said slowly, working through Gawain’s words, “but does killing truly trouble you so?”

“Not during the day.” 

“....Ah.” Even that much reticence was unexpected. Lancelot took a deep breath and prayed he wasn’t crossing a line. “What happened in your dream?”

Gawain didn’t answer for a moment, but before panic that he’d pushed too far could set in, he took a shaky breath and spoke, as if he wasn’t sure either. “It was more akin to-- a collection of scenes, bleeding into one other. Killing people and seeing all these different faces, and my face, often, or my family, and-- other things I’m sure. I remember that most clearly, looking back at my own head on the ground.” 

“Christ.” Lancelot never had nightmares about killing or dying-- neither of them seemed particularly frightening to him. His nightmares were-- not something he wanted to invite in. He blinked forcefully to change the course of his thoughts and peered out the window to the starry sky beyond. “It will be dawn soon,” he said, for lack of any true comfort. “Then you can be back to not caring.”

It wasn’t really meant to be a joke, but Gawain laughed anyway, with enough fondness to make the bitterness not so worrying. “Yeah,” he said, and then repeated it. “Yeah. Oh, Lancelot.”

He wasn’t sure at all how to interpret that, but it sounded nice. Soon the birds would start to sing outside of the window, but till then they would lie there together, and he would run his hands through Gawain's hair. It did snow, and he was glad he hadn’t slept on the floor. 


End file.
